>>>Beta 1.6.0.7 - Fast Loading in campaign<<< (Update x5 Hotfix 2)

[Nick Thomadis]

Hello all,

We usually offer betas prior to the release of a major patch which includes new ships and 3D content. Now we make an exception because we have prepared something that should please the majority of the game's community,

The most frequent complaint of players was the occasional long loading times in the campaign. So we have addressed just that. Please read:
https://steamcommunity.com/games/1069660/announcements/detail/4678766374094571649 

You can place your feedback in this thread or on Steam.

[Werwaz]

4 hours ago, Nick Thomadis said:

Hello all,

We usually offer betas prior to the release of a major patch which includes new ships and 3D content. Now we make an exception because we have prepared something that should please the majority of the game's community,

The most frequent complaint of players was the occasional long loading times in the campaign. So we have addressed just that. Please read:
https://steamcommunity.com/games/1069660/announcements/detail/4678766374094571649 

You can place your feedback in this thread or on Steam.

I have seen a marked improvement in campaign loading times. the pre-made designs are another matter entirely...

it would be nice to be able to paste these into the shared designs so I could make them better.

[Aendos]

Thank you. This seems like an amazing update so far!

[NathanKell]

8 hours ago, Nick Thomadis said:

Hello all,

We usually offer betas prior to the release of a major patch which includes new ships and 3D content. Now we make an exception because we have prepared something that should please the majority of the game's community,

The most frequent complaint of players was the occasional long loading times in the campaign. So we have addressed just that. Please read:
https://steamcommunity.com/games/1069660/announcements/detail/4678766374094571649 

You can place your feedback in this thread or on Steam.

This is an excellent idea. Only problem is the PSPACKED_(year) files are binary blobs and thus not moddable, which means that this whole system is incompatible with any mod that touches parts/techs/balance/whatever, because the designs only work for vanilla part weights, vanilla shiptype data, vanilla tech stats and tech<->year mapping, etc. At the very least, please store these in json in the TextAssets so that modders can edit the ships.

[Северная]

I am pleasantly surprised with this branch.  It took 34 seconds to load a 1930 campaign and each turn went by instantaneously.  The battles are much smoother.  I can actually play the game beyond 1920 now.  Really well done man.

[Zuikaku]

It's now much harder to do some stunts that worked before in battle. Nice improvements!

[Doomed]

I started a game in 1890 on Hard as Great Britain with auto generated designs and have no Battleships.

 

I suspect the issue is that the design the game has generated  (14200) is larger than my capacity to build  (13500)

 

[brothermunro]

More performance is very welcome, but is it possible to add (for us modders and mod users) an ability to toggle the new pre generated ships off? We can then make our own pre-generated ships through the existing shared designs feature without fear of vanilla designs getting into the mix.

Edited September 19 by brothermunro

[Северная]

2 hours ago, Doomed said:

I started a game in 1890 on Hard as Great Britain with auto generated designs and have no Battleships.

 

I suspect the issue is that the design the game has generated  (14200) is larger than my capacity to build  (13500)

 

It might be related to this, but I am in 1907 of an 1890 start I’ve been clicking through and the AI overwhelmingly only makes TB/DD and sometimes CL/CA.  Only one AI nation in 1907 has BB/BC in my game (Italy).  The Soviets ONLY have TB.  It’s very weird.

[Nick Thomadis]

43 minutes ago, Северная said:

It might be related to this, but I am in 1907 of an 1890 start I’ve been clicking through and the AI overwhelmingly only makes TB/DD and sometimes CL/CA.  Only one AI nation in 1907 has BB/BC in my game (Italy).  The Soviets ONLY have TB.  It’s very weird.

Can you make in-game report for this please?

2 hours ago, brothermunro said:

More performance is very welcome, but is it possible to add (for us modders and mod users) an ability to toggle the new pre generated ships off? We can then make our own pre-generated ships through the existing shared designs feature without fear of vanilla designs getting into the mix.

We have it in our mind to do, yes, once we stabilize the beta.

[Doomed]

Ive started another game as GB in 1890 and this time I do have Battleships.  In this case the generated design is 12800 tons with a capacity to build up to 13500.

 

My other game has reached 1900 but Ive submitted a bug report as certain nations still dont have any BB's according to the politics screen

[DougToss]

This was a great opportunity to have the AI at least start with realistic ships that closely follow historical designs, maybe even per country, but these are... not good. 

[jw62]

Performance has definitely improved.

Formations are Borked, however. Ships in reverse order or all scrunched together.

[Северная]

12 hours ago, Nick Thomadis said:

Can you make in-game report for this please?

We have it in our mind to do, yes, once we stabilize the beta.

I made an in-game report, and I’ve replicated the issue three times.  After the AI gets rid of their starting BB, they go into a mode of not making any.  They focus on TB in particular, like it is not unusual to see them with 150 TB and a few cruisers, or sometimes they do cruiser spam.  But I have had it where there is not a single BB among them.

Edited September 19 by Северная
Photo

[Zuikaku]

Crew training is now much more costly than before. It is even far more costly than research. Is that intentional? Maybe that is hampering AI from building battleships?

[Северная]

5 hours ago, jw62 said:

Performance has definitely improved.

Formations are Borked, however. Ships in reverse order or all scrunched together.

I didn’t understand this post until it just happened to me.  I loaded into a battle and the ships “exploded” from being balled up together, all going off in different directions and trying to recover.  It was a mess.

[justMike247]

Over a dozen crashes while loading a battle, including one as simple as my fleet v's a single solitary torpedo boat... Thought we were promised an end to BS missions? Ticket submitted. Reload forces replay of all battles during that month because there's no functioning auto-save after an engagement.

 

Once in battle, my fleet's scattered over literally 100Km...

 

Slight cool down in Tension = rolled straight into war before the previous one has wound up, simply to avoid being extorted by a country boasting a fleet of a single DD and two TB's...

 

Auto resolve still as crazy as ever; exactly how does a solitary TB put an entire fleet into dry dock? If I play the same mission hands on, TB is deep six'd without delivering so much as a single point of damage.

[Doomed]

9 hours ago, jw62 said:

Performance has definitely improved.

Formations are Borked, however. Ships in reverse order or all scrunched together.

Im seeing the same plus sometimes ships in the same Division start  over  a thousand metres apart. Ive made an in game report.

[JaM]

Performance is excellent. Its like different game... but ship balance is way off.. AI tends to build huge amount of cheap ships.. in early campaign, its hundreds of TBs, which then cause battles to hang on loading, as game probably cant handle loading 100+ ships..

 

 

Game seems to hang on loading when trying to fight second battle per turn. First battle loaded fine, but when i tried to load the second engagement, game hangs on AI ship division forming.

[Aendos]

Have noticed in my campaign that the AI nations are spamming Subs. Like hundreds. Soviets had only destroyers and subs.

 

 

[Северная]

Yeah I can’t play 1.6.0.7 anymore until the ship balance thing gets fixed.   It’s such a tremendous update, but the TB spam and no BB is just so unfun to play against.  You don’t even need to armor your own BB as much when there aren’t any enemy BB.  You can also just take more smaller, faster firing guns to use against all the smaller enemy ships.

[SirTrafalgar]

Load times are amazing, but there are a few issues. 

I was playing Spain and got into a war with Austria-Hungary (AH). My first battle with them was torpedo boats that just ran away. The second battle, however, is when I noticed things were off. It was a fight between my task forces consisting of three BBs, three CAs, 2 CLs, and 6 TBs against two CAs and two TBs. I turned, and he spotted me, and I got hit immediately, no problem. A lucky shot can happen even at long range with MK III 9s and Conic II sights. Then things got weird. I was hit again and again and again, over and over again. The AH CAs sniped out one of my TBs, and two of my BBs were at about 60% structure. I continued to close range with the CAs, who could only go 15.2knts. His secondaries opened up, and his accuracy hit the floor, meaning he couldn't hit the broad side of the barn. My ships opened up with their 12 in guns and their secondaries. At the 10k range, neither ship had more than a 1% accuracy. When I turned off the secondaries, my accuracy rose to 38%. That is when I noticed that splashes from other guns were tanking accuracy horribly if secondaries were involved, but since both my 9s and 12s were shooting at the same target, the splashes from other guns were there but more consistent with what I have seen before in the previous patch. I killed all the ships, lost one TB, and took a bunch of damage on my BBs. 

The next fight was even stranger. Six of my old TBs generated an ambush with two CAs. I didn't look too closely at the names at the start. When I got into the battle, I started to organize my TBs, and that's when the battle abruptly ended. The post-battle screen said I got a bunch of VPs, and the two CAs were sunk. That's when I looked at the names of the CAs. They were the ships I sank in the previous battle. 

On the campaign I'd also like to echo everyone in here. Most nations build crap tons of light ships. When they get into a fight, their country starts to collapse pretty quickly. Rebellions start everywhere due to their flimsy navies consisting of TBs and CLs. Also, I don't think the AI prioritizes stability or what the other choices human players would make when making decisions. Before the AI gets into a war, half their noncore possessions are Independent, their economy is in tatters, their alliance networks disbanded, and their fleets are mothballed. It takes the challenge out of the game to constantly fight weak nations when the player is much more efficient at keeping nations together with healthy economies. I am not talking about after suffering a debilitating loss here, and this happens from the pop-up decisions alone. 

[Zuikaku]

AI is indeed building hundreds of TBs rendering their fleets useless

[Северная]

40 minutes ago, SirTrafalgar said:

Load times are amazing, but there are a few issues. 

I was playing Spain and got into a war with Austria-Hungary (AH). My first battle with them was torpedo boats that just ran away. The second battle, however, is when I noticed things were off. It was a fight between my task forces consisting of three BBs, three CAs, 2 CLs, and 6 TBs against two CAs and two TBs. I turned, and he spotted me, and I got hit immediately, no problem. A lucky shot can happen even at long range with MK III 9s and Conic II sights. Then things got weird. I was hit again and again and again, over and over again. The AH CAs sniped out one of my TBs, and two of my BBs were at about 60% structure. I continued to close range with the CAs, who could only go 15.2knts. His secondaries opened up, and his accuracy hit the floor, meaning he couldn't hit the broad side of the barn. My ships opened up with their 12 in guns and their secondaries. At the 10k range, neither ship had more than a 1% accuracy. When I turned off the secondaries, my accuracy rose to 38%. That is when I noticed that splashes from other guns were tanking accuracy horribly if secondaries were involved, but since both my 9s and 12s were shooting at the same target, the splashes from other guns were there but more consistent with what I have seen before in the previous patch. I killed all the ships, lost one TB, and took a bunch of damage on my BBs. 

The next fight was even stranger. Six of my old TBs generated an ambush with two CAs. I didn't look too closely at the names at the start. When I got into the battle, I started to organize my TBs, and that's when the battle abruptly ended. The post-battle screen said I got a bunch of VPs, and the two CAs were sunk. That's when I looked at the names of the CAs. They were the ships I sank in the previous battle. 

On the campaign I'd also like to echo everyone in here. Most nations build crap tons of light ships. When they get into a fight, their country starts to collapse pretty quickly. Rebellions start everywhere due to their flimsy navies consisting of TBs and CLs. Also, I don't think the AI prioritizes stability or what the other choices human players would make when making decisions. Before the AI gets into a war, half their noncore possessions are Independent, their economy is in tatters, their alliance networks disbanded, and their fleets are mothballed. It takes the challenge out of the game to constantly fight weak nations when the player is much more efficient at keeping nations together with healthy economies. I am not talking about after suffering a debilitating loss here, and this happens from the pop-up decisions alone. 

So THAT is what happened!  I had the same ghost battle thing happen and I didn’t understand why it happened, but what you say makes sense.

[DougToss]

9 hours ago, Aendos said:

Have noticed in my campaign that the AI nations are spamming Subs. Like hundreds. Soviets had only destroyers and subs.

 

 

Well…? In that case art largely imitates life.